"ETA?" Theisman asked after a moment, his tone conversational.

"Approximately fifty minutes, Citizen Admiral. She'll reach Enki in about forty minutes, but it'll take a little longer to settle her into the designated orbit."

Theisman nodded without comment. Normally, Traffic Control for a system as busy as Barnett assigned parking orbits to ships on a "first available" basis. Far though the system had fallen from its glory days as the Republic's launch pad to conquest, there was more than enough traffic to make its management a full-time job, and controllers hated VIP ships which required special treatment. But no one was going to complain, even if Traffic Control was required to clear all other ships from the newcomers assigned orbit and a security bubble five thousand kilometers across.

Of course, Theisman thought mordantly, only an idiot would think five k-klicks actually provided any advantage. Oh, it might help against a boarding action or keep some demented crew of kamikazes from physically ramming you, but five thousand kilometers wouldn't mean diddly against a graser or an impeller-drive missile. Hell, for that matter, at five k-klicks a laser head would start out inside its attack range!

Not that I harbor any such designs, of course.

He added the last thought quickly, and then smiled with wry bitterness. He was getting even jumpier than he'd realized. Not even StateSec had yet figured out a way to bug a man's thoughts.

Someone's heels clicked on the floor behind him, and he turned to nod to Dennis LePic. The peoples commissioner nodded back and glanced at the display. Over the course of his lengthy assignment to Theisman, LePic had acquired a certain familiarity with Navy hardware. He still didn't know a thing about how the vast majority of it worked, and he continued to require expert explanations of many of the data codes attached to the various icons, but he knew enough to pick out the newly arrived dot and the ship's name displayed beside it.

"I see Citizen Committeewoman Ransom has arrived," he remarked.

"Or, to be more precise, that she will arrive in the next, ah, thirty-six minutes," Theisman replied with a glance at his chrono. "Not counting however long it takes Tepes to maneuver into her final orbit, of course."

"Of course," LePic agreed, and turned his head to give Theisman a smile that held genuine warmth. The citizen admiral's comment could have been a thinly disguised sneer, an implication that LePic was so ignorant that he needed extra explanations, but both he and Theisman knew it wasn't. That, in fact, the precision of Theisman’s correction had been a sort of shared joke... and evidence that they were comfortable enough with one another for the citizen admiral to risk what might have been misconstrued as insult by another commissioner.

Of course, it helped that LePic understood not only that most of the Navy's officers resented the Committee of Public Safety's spies but the reasons they were resented. If he'd been a regular officer, he would have resented the people's commissioners' interference, and especially the fact that political appointees with little or no military training were empowered to overrule him. That was the reason he made it a point not to interfere in Theisman's professional decisions any more than he absolutely had to.

In turn, the citizen admiral recognized a reasonable man and went out of his way to maintain as friendly a relationship as any officer was likely to manage with any commissioner. Over the last couple of years, LePic had come to suspect how Theisman and Citizen Captain Hathaway had put one over on him in the closing stages of the Fourth Battle of Yeltsin. But no one higher up had commented on it, their actions had probably saved his life as well as their own, and whatever had happened at Yeltsin, Theisman had fought stubbornly, courageously, and well at Seabring. Under the circumstances, LePic had decided to forgive the citizen admiral.

He'd also kept a closer eye on Theisman since, and along the way mutual respect had turned into something much more like friendship than LePic had any intention of admitting to his own superiors. Or, for that matter, to Theisman. Whether he liked the man or not, it was LePic's job to exert civilian control over the citizen admiral and watch for any signs of unreliability, and the people's commissioner was a man who believed both in the importance of his job and in the ultimate objectives of the Committee of Public Safety. He didn't have to like everything StateSec did under the harsh, short-term imperatives of revolutionary survival, and many of the SS's excesses disturbed him deeply, but he continued to believe. That might be growing harder to do than it once had been, but what would he have left if he ever stopped believing?

Dennis LePic was unprepared to answer that question, yet it was one reason he was so often frustrated by Theisman's dislike, no, be honest: his contempt, for politics. The Republic needed men and women like Theisman desperately. It needed them for their skill in battle and perhaps even more as counterweights, both against the reactionary elements which hungered for a return of the old regime and against the revolutionary extremists who let their zeal carry them into excess. It was LePic's duty to report Theisman's lack of revolutionary ardor, but he was uneasily aware that he'd kept his estimate of the full depth of the citizen admiral's disaffection to himself. He really shouldn't have done that, but he felt certain Theisman's loyalty to the Republic and to his own oath of allegiance would continue to overcome his lack of political awareness. It always had so far, at any rate.

Theisman returned LePic's smile with the same edge of warmth. He was unaware of the thoughts passing through the other's mind, but he'd had ample opportunity to see how much better off than many of his peers he was. He would never trust their unspoken partnership to carry LePic into any action which transgressed his own principles, but he was honestly and deeply grateful that at least he didn't have to watch his back against one of the people's commissioners who combined the suspicion of a paranoiac with the conviction that revolutionary fervor made him a better judge of strategy and operations than thirty years of naval experience. Besides, their quasifriendship meant he could actually take the risk of teasing LePic gently from time to time.

At least as long as I don't make the mistake of rubbing his face in something my staff and I shouldn't be doing... like Megan's warning me Ransom was coming. There's a limit to what he can ignore.

"Have we heard anything from Citizen Committee-woman Ransom?" LePic asked after a moment. Even he found the title a bit cumbersome, but he got it out gamely.

"I don't believe so, Sir," Theisman replied, and raised an eyebrow at his ops officer. "Have we heard anything from Tepes, Warner?"

"Only routine contact with System Control, Citizen Admiral," Caslet said.

"I see. Thank you, Citizen Commander." LePic nodded gravely to Caslet. He'd entertained some doubts about the citizen commander originally, yet Caslet had proven himself to LePic's satisfaction since arriving on Theisman's staff. It was a pity he was under a cloud with higher authority, but LePic was doing his best to rehabilitate him in his confidential reports. Of course, one had to do that sort of thing slowly and carefully.

The peoples commissioner turned back to the plot, watching the battlecruiser move slowly nearer, and hid a sigh as he evaluated the mood of the others in the War Room. It was difficult to get a true read on the emotions behind an experienced officers professional mien, but LePic had gotten ample practice over the last six years, and what he sensed disappointed him. He was too self-honest to pretend it wasn't inevitable, yet it saddened him that the Republics officers should feel near universal distaste, if not overt dread and hatred, for a member of the Committee of Public Safety itself.